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THE VISIT.

One day Mrs. Hickey asked me to accompany her to the house of a lady for whom she was working. My hair was very short as was my frock also, and I imagined myself to be very ugly. Reluctantly I followed Mrs. Hickey to the lady's flat. We were shown into a large room filled with easels on which were the most astonishing pictures -- embossed seascapes framed in velvet! The last artist entered the room, kissed me, and gave me a handful of gingersnaps. While she spoke to Mrs. Hickey I fearfully approached one of these pictures. It was a wreck; the waves and the drowning people were boldly embossed in the foreground. Afterwards I was told that the subject was a most improbable one for a fancy picture framed in velvet. Be that as it may, the embossed picture of the wreck, the gingersnaps, and the lady artist, all remain in my memory, vivid parts of that particular visit.

A few days later a less pleasant event was to occur. I was out buying buns when someone told me to run home quickly. On opening the door I saw a grey-haired gentleman sitting in Mike's squalid bedroom. I recognized my grandfather's secretary. Silently we looked at each other. No doubt he was surprised and pained by what he saw, I was equally surprised, and worried at whqt I sensed was about to happen. I watched him take from a large pocketbook several bank notes. He handed them to Mrs. Hickey and asked her if the sum was sufficient. She thanked him volubly, her features taking on that unhappy expression of intense pleasure I have so often noticed on the faces of the poor. Then, my dirty hand in his, and without a hat, I walked out of the house with him.

Once in the carriage with Mr. Barr I asked him if I was to go back to my mother. He answered briefly that I was to be sent to school, but that in the meantime a lady, a friend of his, would clean and dress me. This lady proved most enthusiastic about her task; she had me scrubbed first, then arrayed in the most expensive clothes she could find. The frock was of lace over a silk slip;–the hat was a wonder-of cream Italian